


We Belong

by Mierke



Category: Gena/Finn - Hannah Moskowitz & Kat Helgeson
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon, mention of canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22634785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mierke/pseuds/Mierke
Summary: After the events of Gena/Finn, Gena and Finn find their home.
Relationships: Gena/Finn/Charlie
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	We Belong

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt _Here_ for the [100 Fandom challenge](https://100fandoms.dreamwidth.org/).

I'm still writing about Jake.

Tumbledown is hosting a tribute event for the anniversary of Zach's death, and I've been working on my piece for weeks. It's not even that long, really. But I've got so much to say, so much I want to put into words I couldn’t say out loud.

I'm not writing about his death. I've been there, I've done the story, and it's not what I want to convey right now.

After all, it's not his death that made a lasting impact.

That sounds insensitive, doesn't it? That's not what I mean. God, I can only remember flashes of the months after the accident, as if the pain and grief and darkness were so total and complete they blocked out most of my life. For a while, Zach's death was all there was. Zach and Jake, I lost them both, two people who meant everything to me, and who wouldn't go a bit crazy when that happened? For a while there reality lost its grip on me, as if gravity lost its power and I floated aimlessly in a cloud of nothingness.

It's just that his death, this loss, isn't what defined my life. I've talked this over and over in group therapy, in one on one as well now I've got the money for personal therapy again, to let go of the guilt of not seeing this as a dividing line, as a before and after.

Because it's not before and after Zach. It's before and after Finn.

Finn and Charlie.

So no, I don't write about Jake's death. I write about Jake and Tyler together, about them being happy. I write about the little things, about Tyler taking care of Jake when he's got pneumonia, of birthdays spent together, of shopping trips. I start a story about Jake's father and it devolves into this grand fluff-fest in which Alan Henry _didn't_ die, but faked his own death to protect his son and I'm not even sorry when I post it.

There's a tribute event for the cast and crew too. Toby invited me personally, said he knew Zach would have wanted me there, but I declined. There's nothing for me there.

Instead, I'm lying here on the couch, Finn on the left of me and Charlie on the right, and we're watching _Up Below_. Me and Finn are mouthing along to everything, taking turns in delivering Evanson's speeches, getting really quiet when Jake's talking, and Charlie's looking at us as if he's got no idea why he loves us but still does.

I feel safe here, and this, this is Zach's real legacy. It's because of him, because of Jake, that I've found this place where I belong, a home where people care about me. Where people worry because they love me, and not just because it's something you do, because you're scared the crazy person will go off the rails again and you will have to pick up the pieces. It is so much more than I ever expected to find, so much more than I'd ever thought I'd deserve.

So when Tyler tells Jake that he forgives him, and when Jake believes him, I lay my head on Finn's shoulder and cry. Because I believe it too.

* * *

It took us three years to figure out what this was, what any of it meant. I think Charlie probably was the first to realise, the first to accept that maybe sometimes love extends beyond two people. He didn't tell me before I told him, but he had this tilt in his head when I stammered out the words that meant he knew all along and was just waiting for me to catch up.

I didn't want to overwhelm Evie, neither of us wanted to overwhelm her, but when she started talking of moving out, of moving on, of leaving us our space so we could start our actual life - as if that would ever be a life without her - we rushed over each other to tell her we loved her, genuinely, overwhelmingly loved her, that she made our life make sense.

She stayed and we watched _Man of the House_ that evening. She told us stories about Zach taking care of her, about how difficult everyone on set found her, how the fires would flare up around her and she didn't know what to do. She might have been trying to scare us off, but me and Charlie, we rallied around her, listened, made sure she knew we were there and she was okay. We would still be there if things started getting bad again, we would always be there.

We slept in the same room for the first time that night, all three of us in one giant heap in the bed that was really only big enough for two, but it was the best I slept in ages.

I still call her Evie, confusing the fuck out of everyone who knows her from real life, her family and friends from before and the friends she made along the way. Toby, on the rare occasions that they talk, which happens now and then which always makes me smile, calls her Genny in this teasing way that always makes her indignant and yet makes her eyes sparkle. Charlie, like everyone else, calls her Gena, though he throws in a Genevieve every once in a while just to make her giggle.

For me, though, she'll always be Evie. Evie, whom I loved back when she was just a girl on the other end of the screen in the other end of the country. Evie, with whom I shared so much fannish delight and ideas that at times it felt like we were two sides of the same person. The one who understood me like no one else did. Evie, who broke down and went crazy and then came back to me, because she's strong, so much stronger than anyone else.

Evie, because to me, _EvenIf will always be the girl I fell in love with.


End file.
